Another upcoming DVD release is Kevin Hart's latest comedy Night School.
Kevin Hart's comedy is quite hit-and-miss for me. Just putting it out there that he can be well-spoken and deep thinking, and his well thought out comedy stand-up can certainly tickle my fancy. What I'm not a huge fan of, is his loud comedy. Where we are expected to laugh because he said something loudly. Usually, the louder he yells, the poorer quality of humour it tends to be, and the more I lose interest.
Night School seems to be a particularly low-budget film. I assume this because despite wanting an opening scene taking place during high school, they didn't want teenagers to play younger versions of the characters. They just slapped some cornrow braided wig onto 39-year-old Kevin Hart's head and called him a teenager. It was cheap, unconvincing and a horrible start to what would end up being a lacklustre film.
Night School is decidedly low-brow humour. The majority of the jokes come from insults, pulling faces, demeaning costumes, and otherwise loud, tantrum-like behaviour. What it makes it all that much worse is that they linger on each joke for far too long, to the point that it becomes uncomfortable. You know you are watching the lowest decile of humour when their plan is to keep running a gag into the ground in the hopes that someone will "get it" and laugh. We get it. It's just unoriginal, and not funny.
Less than 15 minutes into the film and I have already lost interest. The event that starts of Kevin Hart's characters (Teddy, I think his name was?) fall from grace is flawed. If you have ever worked with an LPG bottle, you know how the valves work. So that tells me the film is lazy, and not even going for the low-hanging fruit on the storyline tree, it's grabbing the rotting pieces from the ground.
The supporting cast of characters was initially interesting. There were enough quirky characteristics and backstories to get some good character arcs and intertwining plots going, but only Mary Lynn Rajskub's character Theresa had any significant form of development. The remainder of the class was just there for the sake of being one-dimensional characters that could be a source of a different category of jokes that could be repeated until it padded out the runtime of nearly two hours!
Night School feels like a loose collection of ideas thrown together. "Hey guys, we're going to put you in a variety of rooms. Improvise funny things, and we'll figure out a plot later." At least that's how I assume something like this comes along.
The only real upsides that I thought the movie had was that it didn't provide an instant win, and it did make a reasonable attempt at explaining the effect of learning disabilities. Once the film starts to draw to a close, it reveals that no this isn't the end, and we are led through a montage that takes us to the end. It may have indeed just been another source of padding for the unnecessarily long runtime, but I like that the character doesn't just get handed a win because it's a movie.
And of course learning disabilities like dyslexia and discalculia are serious disorders that can have a severe impact on one's learning abilities, especially if the teachers are unaware of it, so I liked that they brought that to the big screen.
Is that enough to recommend this film? I would only recommend it if you really love Kevin Hart's loud style of comedy. If that appeals to you then you may enjoy it. Otherwise, the film will really fall flat, and you'll waste two hours of your life on it like I did.
Kevin Hart's comedy is quite hit-and-miss for me. Just putting it out there that he can be well-spoken and deep thinking, and his well thought out comedy stand-up can certainly tickle my fancy. What I'm not a huge fan of, is his loud comedy. Where we are expected to laugh because he said something loudly. Usually, the louder he yells, the poorer quality of humour it tends to be, and the more I lose interest.
Night School seems to be a particularly low-budget film. I assume this because despite wanting an opening scene taking place during high school, they didn't want teenagers to play younger versions of the characters. They just slapped some cornrow braided wig onto 39-year-old Kevin Hart's head and called him a teenager. It was cheap, unconvincing and a horrible start to what would end up being a lacklustre film.
Night School is decidedly low-brow humour. The majority of the jokes come from insults, pulling faces, demeaning costumes, and otherwise loud, tantrum-like behaviour. What it makes it all that much worse is that they linger on each joke for far too long, to the point that it becomes uncomfortable. You know you are watching the lowest decile of humour when their plan is to keep running a gag into the ground in the hopes that someone will "get it" and laugh. We get it. It's just unoriginal, and not funny.
Less than 15 minutes into the film and I have already lost interest. The event that starts of Kevin Hart's characters (Teddy, I think his name was?) fall from grace is flawed. If you have ever worked with an LPG bottle, you know how the valves work. So that tells me the film is lazy, and not even going for the low-hanging fruit on the storyline tree, it's grabbing the rotting pieces from the ground.
The supporting cast of characters was initially interesting. There were enough quirky characteristics and backstories to get some good character arcs and intertwining plots going, but only Mary Lynn Rajskub's character Theresa had any significant form of development. The remainder of the class was just there for the sake of being one-dimensional characters that could be a source of a different category of jokes that could be repeated until it padded out the runtime of nearly two hours!
Night School feels like a loose collection of ideas thrown together. "Hey guys, we're going to put you in a variety of rooms. Improvise funny things, and we'll figure out a plot later." At least that's how I assume something like this comes along.
The only real upsides that I thought the movie had was that it didn't provide an instant win, and it did make a reasonable attempt at explaining the effect of learning disabilities. Once the film starts to draw to a close, it reveals that no this isn't the end, and we are led through a montage that takes us to the end. It may have indeed just been another source of padding for the unnecessarily long runtime, but I like that the character doesn't just get handed a win because it's a movie.
And of course learning disabilities like dyslexia and discalculia are serious disorders that can have a severe impact on one's learning abilities, especially if the teachers are unaware of it, so I liked that they brought that to the big screen.
Is that enough to recommend this film? I would only recommend it if you really love Kevin Hart's loud style of comedy. If that appeals to you then you may enjoy it. Otherwise, the film will really fall flat, and you'll waste two hours of your life on it like I did.